News « AltSearchEngines

Time Inc. buys shopping search engine StyleFeeder

January 19th, 2010 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in News, Shopping, Verticals | 1 Comment »

2010-01-19_1641 Fresh off its AOL divorce, Time Inc. has acquired StyleFeeder, one of a growing number of sites that may be the future for glossy magazines, although they look nothing like one. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although an article in the WSJ estimated it was “well into eight figures.”

StyleFeeder is a bookmarking and product search site that recommends new items to shoppers based on what other users with similar tastes have liked. Amazon and Last.fm use similar technology, which is called collaborative filtering.

StyleFeeder is one of a growing number of fashion-oriented new-media sites where users create the content around brands. Others include fashion collage site Polyvore, fashion search engine ShopStyle and bookmarking sites such as Kaboodle.

The site, which was previously working with Hachette, is profitable with fewer than ten full-time employees. It has more than 1 million members and 600,000 unique visitors monthly. It displays more than 14 million products around the Web, and takes a cut of sales whenever a user clicks and buys. It has received more than $3 million in venture backing from firms such as Highland Capital Partners of Boston.

Source: WWDMedia by Cate T. Corcoran

Simply Hired launches social job search with LinkedIn

January 19th, 2010 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Job Search, News, Updates, Verticals | No Comments »

Simply Hired, the job search engine and recruitment network, today announced new social job search features through expanded integration with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. A pioneer in bringing social connections into online job search, Simply Hired’s new features include the first LinkedIn mashup that enables job seekers to view business connections instantly in their search results.

Today’s web-savvy job seekers have turned social applications into professional job hunting tools by embracing social networks to expand professional connections, tapping into Twitter for real-time alerts about job openings and leveraging blogs to increase their online presence. Simply Hired’s new features integrate many of these existing tools into the site’s job search results, improving the effectiveness of social applications for job seekers, driving innovation in job search technology forward and further mirroring how candidates find jobs through traditional networking.

Simply Hired’s mashup with LinkedIn is the first in the industry to enable job seekers to discover their connections at the organisations returned in their search results. This new feature is an evolution of the Simply Hired Who Do I Know? tool, which allowed users to connect to LinkedIn from a SimplyHired.co.uk job listing to find out if they had a contact within the organisation. With this latest release, job seekers now have the ability to immediately see whether someone in their network is affiliated with a potential employer. As a user’s network grows, their search results will always reveal the most recent and relevant connections.

“Given the competitive employment landscape, it is imperative now more than ever for job seekers to leverage all possible avenues in pursuit of their dream job,” said Sachin Shah, director of international, Simply Hired. “With hundreds of applicants vying for any one role, a personal or professional connection within an organisation can give a job seeker the crucial advantage. Our new features show job seekers that there is hope; that their network of connections is more powerful than they believe.”

The new “Share” feature enables job seekers to easily share interesting job openings with their friends and followers on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as well as via email. This feature enables users to help each other locate relevant opportunities. Employers and job boards also benefit from increased visibility and traffic when a job posting goes viral.

“The job search process can be incredibly time consuming, with some job seekers spending the equivalent of a full-time job on their search,” said Francis Larkin, senior product manager, Simply Hired. “Our goal was to help increase the exchange between job seekers’ personal networks and our job search engine to provide a faster, more efficient job search experience.”

In addition to the new social features, Simply Hired has improved the search results interface to provide a simpler, faster and more efficient user experience. The addition of a “Telecommute” job type filter addresses the feedback from many job seekers who prefer to work remotely.

Source: onrec

BBC launches Enhanced Search

January 14th, 2010 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Global, Guest Authors, News | 1 Comment »

Matthew McDonnell

Earlier this week we began a phased roll-out of our new site search.

New features include:
A brand-new search which intelligently tailors the display to the specific query the user enters.

The addition of featured content to search result pages.

Improved links to non-BBC content.

More accurate results through improved meta-data creation.

Our aim in designing this new search experience has been to present search results in a way that makes sense of the huge variety of content available on bbc.co.uk. It should be effortless to find a specific piece of content and enjoyable to explore everything that we have on a subject.

The richness and diversity of the BBC’s internet content (News, Blogs, iPlayer, Weather, Sport, Recipes and so on) places demands on site search that are different from more focused websites and this led us to explore original solutions to enterprise search.

cam_600_01

As you will see in this post, our solution is a major departure from traditional enterprise search designs. So, for the rest of this post, I’d like to give you some insight into how we reached our decision to make such a significant change to the way we deliver our search results.

As always we would love to hear your views on these changes.

Read all about the innovations at the BBC – Click Here

Search for Scholarly Journals on CiteULike with DeepDyve

January 14th, 2010 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in News, Updates | 2 Comments »

DeepDyve’s $0.99 Rentals Now Available on CiteULike

DD_identity_final art DeepDyve and CiteULike announced today that the companies are collaborating to deliver a superior way to easily and affordably share and read scholarly information on the Internet. CiteULike’s web-based service is widely used in academic and professional circles.

Through its partnership with DeepDyve, CiteULike now offers its users a simple way to rent and read the journal articles they discover for as little as $0.99. With nearly one million visitors per month, CiteULike is a rapidly growing community of like-minded people who seek out scholarly information on the Internet. With one click, users can bookmark articles of interest into their personal library and automatically save the citation details. Users can also share their library with others, as well as find out who is reading the same articles.

DD2-Home-100107

“Our community is made up of researchers, knowledge workers and lifelong learners who are always looking for ways to access information more easily,” said Kevin Emamy of CiteULike. “CiteULike enables the management and discovery of highly relevant scholarly papers, but our users often struggle to find the full text of these articles on the web. With DeepDyve, users can now quickly and affordably rent and read the full text of authoritative articles from DeepDyve’s growing collection of scientific and scholarly journals.”

“DeepDyve and CiteULike are both dedicated to making scholarly information more affordably and easily available,” said William Park, CEO at DeepDyve. “We are delighted that CiteULike chose to integrate our rental service as a way to enrich their users’ experience.”

CiteULike users will have the option to rent articles that appear in DeepDyve’s extensive database of journals for $0.99 effective immediately. The full text of rented articles can be read repeatedly for up to 24 hours. And for those users who want to rent a higher volume of articles or would like longer-term access to their articles, DeepDyve offers subscription plans for as little as $9.99 per month. Those who are interested in DeepDyve’s subscription plans are encouraged to sign up for a free 2-week trial.

DD2-DocView-100107

registerPict CiteULike is a social bookmarking service that helps people store, organize and share research papers. When browsing any major online database of papers, users can automatically add articles to their personal library. CiteULike’s social features mean that users quickly and easily discover new and relevant research.

DeepDyve was founded in 2005 by scientists who shared the vision of simplifying the research process. Through direct collaboration with the industry’s most prominent and well respected publishers, the company now offers the world’s largest online rental service for scientific, technical and medical research with more than 30 million articles from thousands of authoritative journals.

De Gruyter partners with DeepDyve to Make Its Journals More Accessible

De Gruyter today announced that it is making more than 160,000 scholarly and professional journal articles available via DeepDyve, a company whose rental service for scientific research articles is designed to meet the needs of sophisticated professionals and consumers, so-called “knowledge workers”. Through DeepDyve, users will be able to rent the full-text of any article from De Gruyter’s vast collection of humanities and natural sciences journals. De Gruyter is renowned for its extensive collection of high-profile publications, including journals back to 1826 in the studies of philosophy,
linguistics, theology, history and classical studies, as well as mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry.

“It is our key responsibility towards our authors and end-users to assure comprehensive dissemination as well as convenient access to our content. DeepDyve helps us reach an even broader universe of potential customers, especially individuals and small to medium businesses,” said Katrin Siems, Director of Business Development at De Gruyter. “In the rapidly changing environment of scientific publishing it is of crucial importance to find new approaches to both customers and business models by cooperating with innovative partners like DeepDyve.”

“We estimate that there are over 250 million knowledge workers worldwide, the majority of whom use the web for their primary means of research yet do not have easy or affordable access to authoritative information vital to their research,” said William Park, CEO at DeepDyve. “We are delighted that De Gruyter has chosen DeepDyve to help them reach this new audience of non-institutional knowledge workers.”

De Gruyter’s entire portfolio of journals will be available via DeepDyve beginning in March 2010. Users will have the option to rent individual articles for $0.99. The full text of rented articles can be read repeatedly for up to 24 hours. And for those users who want to rent a higher volume of articles or would like longer-term access to their articles, DeepDyve offers subscription plans for as little as $9.99 per month.

De Gruyter is an independent academic publishing house. De Gruyter can look back on a history spanning 260 years. The publishing group with headquarters in Berlin and New York annually publishes over 800 new titles in the humanities, medicine, science and law and more than 100
journals and digital media.
img_start_teaser_EN