Techmeme adds search, becomes useful to the general public

Over the last few years, technology news site Techmeme has gotten a lot of attention in the technology blogosphere. That's because it's a tool for tracking conversations and hot topics in the tech blogosphere. Yes, part of the reason we as tech bloggers pay so much attention to Techmeme is because we're self absorbed. But the site has also been a great source of news. Want to know what today's biggest stories are? Techmeme will tell you.

But Techmeme has historically done a pretty lousy job of telling you yesterday's big stories. Or last week's. Or last years. Because the site has lacked any sort of a search function. But today, Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera finally added a search box to the site.

Only the top stories are indexed. And by default only the fist few sentences from each story. So Techmeme isn't exactly a Google News killer. You won't find every article ever written about a topic. But what you will find are some of the top stories (or at least the most discussed/blogged about stories) written about a topic. Or if you want to find every article from a certain source that made it onto Techmeme, you can just search for a URL. For example sourceurl:"http://www.downloadsquad.com" brings up a list of Download Squad stories that have been featured on the site.

The launch of the search tool actually makes Techmeme a site worth visiting if you're not just trying to figure out which stories Download Squad, TechCrunch, CNET, ReadWriteWeb, and Engadget are covering today.

[Via: Download Squad ]
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Redlasso offering bloggers TV/radio searchable database

Redlasso is a database stuffed with the latest TV and radio programming, allowing registered users to search for and "lasso" out clips in order to imbed them on other sites. Although the company is currently negotiating deals with several content partners, Redlasso says "virtually all media" (TV, Radio, streaming internet programming, podcasts) is indexed in almost real-time.
Much of TV and radio has so far been unsearchable in any truly convenient way. Until now, finding and embedding a TV clip often ends requires the use of less-than-legal services and practices. This is the hole Redlasso is trying to fill, though, it's hard to foresee the sight's success (or failure.
The accounts are monitored to make sure no one's watching extended amounts of programming. This makes it an inconvenient tool for media pirates, but it is intended solely for bloggers and other web publishers only. As a result, expect some type of application process when requesting an account. As for us, we're waiting on our acceptance emails.

Although the service is free, it is currently in closed beta, meaning its unavailable to the general public.

[Via: Download Squad ]
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More acquisitions: Comcast buys Plaxo, Ask.com buys Dictionary.com

There must be something in the water this week. While the biggest new media acquisition story of the day has to be CBS buying CNET for $1.8 billion, big companies are swallowing up smaller ones left and right. Media company Comcast is buying social networking site Plaxo for something like $150 million, while Ask.com is shelling out an undisclosed sum for Lexico, the company that runs Dictionary.com.

While there's been a lot of speculation recently that someone was going to buy Plaxo, Comcast wasn't the first company that sprung to mind. We figured a company that already has ties to the social networking space like Google or Facebook would have made more sense. In a blog post on the subject, Plaxo CEO Ben Golub says Comcast has plans to "bring the social media experience to mainstream consumers." That means using Plaxo's technology to connect with your contacts across multiple devices. And since Comcast is already in the TV, phone, and ISP business, it should be interesting to see how this plays out. Perhaps your TV viewing habits will automatically be added to your social networking profile? Yeah, we hope not.

The Ask.com/Lexico deal seems like a more natural fit. We doubt Lexico's popular web sites like Dictionary.com will disappear. Rather, Ask will be able to increase its overall web traffic by bringing the new sites into the fold.

[Via: Download Squad ]
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Powerset semantic search engine launches Wikipedia-based demo

Powerset Demo Video from officialpowerset on Vimeo.

Powerset has launched a public beta of their new natural language search engine. What exactly do we mean by natural language search? First of all, you can enter keywords like you would with any other search engine. But Powerset can also handle phrases and questions. But Powerset's semantic tools go far beyond that. For example, if you search for "paintings by Dali," the search engine will understand that you are looking for paintings, and if it can find some images, it will put them at the the top of the page.

Right now Powerset searches exactly one site. But since that site is Wikipedia, you can still find a ton of useful information. But you're going to have more luck with queries like "who shot Lincoln?" than "when will the 3G iPhone be released."

When you click through to read a Wikipedia article, Powerset will bring up a sidebar tool that lets you view either an outline of the article or "Factz," which are typically some of the key points in an article. If you click on a fact, you'll be taken immediately to the relevant part of the Wikipedia article.

It's not clear whether Powerset is a Google killer, since the search engine currently doesn't index the web, just one site right now. So it's not clear how well it would be able to prioritize data from millions of pages. But it works quite well as an advanced search tool for a single site like Wikipedia.

[Via: GigaOm ]
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TinEye image search engine launches public beta

There are plenty of image search engines on the web. Enter a text based search term, and Google, MSN, or Yahoo! will spit out a series of pictures it thinks match that query. But TinEye takes a slightly different approach. This image search engine, currently in private beta, lets you upload an image from your desktop and search the web for identical or similar images. You can also use an online image as your starting point.

The concept is pretty cool. If you're looking for an image, why should you have to enter text? But the truth of the matter is it takes a bit longer to search for something using TinEye than a text based search engine. And it's a lot harder to get accurate results. If you upload a popular image that's been used on a bunch of web sites, you should be fine. But if you upload your hand-drawn image of Angelina Jolie naked, don't expect to find any high resolution images matching your query. Not that we tried.

But seriously, we uploaded a few images that have been posted here at Download Squad, and TinEye didn't spit out a single match, which means it doesn't even indext this site. So while the service claims to be searching a whopping 487 million images, it doesn't exactly cover every site on the web.

Still, we'll be keeping an eye on TinEye. If the service can improve its index and do a better job of finding similar images, and not just identical ones, it could actually become useful.

[Via: WebWare ]
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Guess The Google - Today's Time Waster

Quick, what do the twenty images above have in common? If you guessed they're all images pulled from Google Images, you guessed right. But that's not the answer we're looking for. The correct answer is Windows. And now you pretty much know how to play Guess the Google.

The game picks a random word, performs a Google Image search, and then gives you the results. You have 20 seconds to figure out the original search query. The faster you figure it out, the more points you get. The game is simple, but surprisingly addictive.

[Via: MakeUseOf ]
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LOOKTorrent: It's like YouTorrent but less useful

Now that YouTorrent is exclusively dedicated to boring, legal torrents, you might be looking for another BitTorrent search engine that searches a large number of BitTorrent trackers. LOOKTorrent fits the bill. Kind of.

The site lets you choose from a list of 25 BitTorrent trackers that you want to search. Enter your search term, and you'll start to find results from those pages. But unlike YouTorrent, which combines the results from each site onto one easy to use page, LOOKTorrent basically takes you to Mininova, The Pirate Bay, or whatever other sites you choose, while keeping a LOOKTorrent navigation tab at the top of the screen. If you don't find what you're looking for at one site, you can search the next. One at a time.

LOOKtorrent could come in handy if you can't find what you're looking for on one site, and need a good list of 25 BitTorrent trackers. But if you want all of your results on one page, you're probably better off with NowTorrents, ScrapeTorrent, or PizzaTorrent.


[Via: MakeUseOf ]
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