When you're using a search engine to find what you're looking for, you're probably used to typing a query, looking at the results, and refining your query. Every now and again you might even click a button that says it will show you similar results. Now Microsoft has added a button with exactly that feature to the company's image search engine.

When you conduct a search using Live Search Images, you can hover your mouse over any image and click the "show similar images" button. To be honest, it's a bit tricky to tell exactly what this does. Because if you've searched for something like "stick" you're probably already looking at a window filled with pictures of sticks. If you click the similar images button, you'll wind up on another page with images filled with sticks. That said, when I said I wanted to see similar images to a stick bug, I did get another picture of an insect - and several pictures of deodorant, glue sticks, and stick figures.

If you're looking for a more advanced image comparison service, check out TinEye, a beta site that allows you to upload a picture and find images on the internet that are compositionally similar.

[via Google Operating System]

Good things really do come in small packages, as is the case with the URL Alias Firefox addon.
I originally installed it looking to make the address bar more launcher-like. For example, I wanted http://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox to open when I type mail or http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SPORTS05 when I enter wings.

I prefer using words or abbreviations I can remember easily instead of hotkey combinations, and this experimental addon is the perfect tool for the job.

Since URL Alias also supports a variable (yep, just one), you can do a whole lot more with your aliases than just save keystrokes.

To manage aliases, type the following in your address bar: chrome://urlalias/content/urlalias.xul [enter]

Suppose you want to set up a Google search alias for results from downloadsquad.com.

dls http://www.google.com/search?q=%s%20site:downloadsquad.com

The %s is replaced by whatever text you enter after the keyword: dls firefox addons will return results for all matching DS posts. Change the alias text and url, and set up as many site-specific searches as you like.

Soovle is a search engine for people who might not know exactly what they're looking for. As soon as you start typing a search term, Soovle will begin to offer suggestions for related terms that may help you refine your search. And it doesn't just offer suggestions for one service, but for 7: Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Answers.com, Ask.com, YouTube, and Amazon.

If you want to take Soovle up on one of its suggestions, just click on the text and Soovle will change the contents of the search box. If you want to change the default search engine, just click the icon below the search bar and when you click Soovle, you'll get your search results from Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, or whichever service you selected.

You can also save Soovle suggestions in a browser cookie or as a text file.

[via TechnoSpot]

Some people just don't want to use a mouse. Sometimes site designers take this demographic into account, sometimes they don't. But if you're a keyboard-only person: Julius Eckert has built a homepage just for you. Keyboardr returns search results from Google, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Blog Search and others, and gives you a cursor to navigate the results entirely via arrow keys.

The experience of using Keyboardr is slick, but it could be better with one tricky little improvement. The list of results from each search engine seems to function as a separate element on the page, so hitting a right or left arrow takes you to the top of the adjacent list, not to the result that's directly across, as you would expect. This isn't a big deal, but it would make Keyboardr even faster if Julius could get around it. As more features are added (customization would be amazing), I'll give serious consideration to Keyboardr as my primary homepage.

DS Reader Jamie wrote recently looking for some assistance, saying:

I'm not the most disorganized of individuals: my music is in my music folder, etc. etc., but i have a fatal flaw. I put random stuff on my desktop, then it gets cluttered. My solution has been, in a word, poor. I put all the random stuff into a folder that usually goes by the name of misc or sort this out later. I was wondering what kind of advice you'd give for someone in this situation other than, "Get off your ass and go through it all!!"

For starters, Jamie, you hit the nail on the head - but don't fret, chum, you're not alone. Though I've planned ahead far enough to partition my drives on the laptop I'm using to post this article, the D: drive is a nightmarish mess of downloads, old backups, ISO images, and other files.

Let's get started by downloading your choice of duplicate file finders, like Easy Duplicate Finder or CloneSpy. Both work well, and will save time by getting rid of unnecessary files before we start organizing. For the rest of the work, we're going manual - we created our messes that way, so that's how we're cleaning them up!

If you do a lot of shopping at Amazon and a lot of comparison shopping or product research on Google, you might want to check out the GoogAzon add-on for Firefox. Once installed, any time you search for an item on Google, you'll also see the top search result for your query from Amazon.

If a single product listing isn't good enough, just click the "see top 10 items" button and a list of 10 items from Amazon will drop down. Hovering over a link brings up an image of the product. You can also click the Share button to email a product link.

Despite it's name, GoogAzon isn't limited to Google searches. It also works with Yahoo! and MSN Live.

GoogAzon does appear to inject an Amazon Affiliate code into the links, so the plugin's author will likely make a few bucks any time you actually buy an item found through a GoogAzon search. But it shouldn't cost you anything extra.

[via Firefox Facts]

We've all been there. You're working, and an instant message window pops up. It's your friend, who I'll call "Captain Obvious," and he wants to know what that new James Bond movie is called. Even if you know, why is he asking you? That's what Google is for. Instead of answering his question straight away, just say "Here, let me Google that for you."

Let Me Google That For You will give your friend a step-by-step reminder about how to Google. Step 1 (type In your question) shows the question being input into the Google search box. Step 2: click search. Step 3 is "Was that so hard?" and then your friend jumps to the relevant Google results page. That ought to be a strong enough hint for Captain Obvious, but it's funny enough not to feel too mean.

Yahoo! is rolling out a new search page called Yahoo! Glue that lets you see a bunch of different sorts of search results on a single page. The service pulls data from Yahoo! News, Images, Shopping, and Answers pages. But it also draws data from third party services including lastFM, YouTube, and WikiPedia.

One of the more surprising modules I found was a list of blog posts from Google Blog Search. One module that's surprisingly absent? Yahoo! web search results.

The search engine will only return results for a limited number of queries right now, which doesn't make a ton of sense, since the pages are crafted by a computer algorithm, not human intervention.

[via TechCrunch]

Xobni is a plugin for Outlook that adds advanced search and social functions to the email client. When we last looked at Xobni, the service indexed your email messages and created personal profiles for each of your contacts by automatically extracing phone numbers and loking users up on LinkedIn. Now Xobni has rolled out an update that adds integration with Skype, Facebook, Hoovers, and Yahoo! Mail.

Here's how it works. You can search for email using the Xobni sidebar. When you click on a message, Xobni will pull up information about the sender, including information from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Hoovers. If your contact's Skype profile or phone number are available, you can also initiate a call with the click of a button.

In addition to searching your Outlook mail, you can also have Xobni index your Yahoo! Mail, although in order to reply to messages you'll need to login to the Yahoo! Mail web interface.

I have a confession. A friend of mine sent me a link to a list of tech tips written by David Pogue in the New York Times. Upon reading the title, Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User, I basically ignored it. Then this week, it showed up in my Instapaper list of articles to read, and I decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did!

While I don't want to toot my own horn, I have to admit that I would not consider myself a basic computer user. Yet this article pointed out at least two tips that I had not heard before. I'd love to send it to all of my computer-using friends and colleagues (essentially, everyone I know), but I'm afraid of them interpreting it as an insult. So instead, I'll write about it here and hope that some of them notice and go read it.

Probably my favorite tips from Pogue's post relate to digital cameras:

• The number of megapixels does not determine a camera's picture quality; that's a marketing myth. The sensor size is far more important. (Use Google to find it. For example, search for "sensor size Nikon D90.")
• Forcing the camera's flash to go off prevents silhouetted, too-dark faces when you're outdoors.

The one I most wish people knew about is:

• You generally can't send someone more than a couple of full-size digital photos as an e-mail attachment; those files are too big, and they'll bounce back to you. (Instead, use iPhoto or Picasa–photo-organizing programs that can automatically scale down photos in the process of e-mailing them.)

And a great tip when searching:

• When you're searching for something on the Web using, say, Google, put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. For example, if you put quotes around "electric curtains," Google won't waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word "electric" and another set containing the word "curtains."

I would add one more search-related tip that in my experience most people don't know about. If your search seems to be full of information about something different than what you're looking for, you can remove search terms so that Google ignores pages with the words specified. So if you're looking for information about the Java programming language, but not coffee, you can search for Java -coffee, though I'd probably add the word programming to make it more specific: Java programming -coffee.

There are a ton more great tips in Pogue's blog post. What tips do you wish your friends and colleagues would learn?

Remember how Yahoo! and Google announced this summer that they would be partnering to place Google AdSense ads next to Yahoo! search results? Yeah, that's not going to happen.

Basically, Google says it's pulling out of the deal because government regulators and "some advertisers" are uncomfortable with the idea. The New York Times puts things a bit more strongly, mentioning that regulators planned to file a lawsuit to block the patnership between two of the largest web search portals.

The deal was first announced back in June, shortly after Microsoft walked away from negotiations to purchase the company. At this point, it's not clear what the future holds for Yahoo!, a company that's clearly looking for ways to revitalize its brand.

Back in July, Jay linked to the rather awesome Multicolr service that lets you select up to 10 colours using the colour-picker on the page [selecting a colour more than once to add some bias should you wish] and the Multicolr app goes away and does its thing. 'Its thing' was, back in July, a search of the Interesting photos that make it into Flickr's Explore pages.

How times have changed. Just three months later, the colour search has a 10 million strong database of Creative-Commons photos the Idée Inc. folks have indexed from Flickr using their own 'visual similarity technology' and Multicolr now presents you with a grid of 50 matching CC-licenced photos. And yes, you read it right: that's 10 million Creative Commons-licenced photos indexed.

After playing with this new version of the mashup I'm still astounded - both by how the mashup works now [with a far larger image pool that previously], and by potential further uses. Multicolr, with perhaps tag-refinement for helping you find just the right photo subject, would be image-search nirvana - no doubt Idée [and I daresay Flickr] must be aware of this.

Safari users have been enjoying the search-as-you-type extension Inquisitor for a long time, and now Firefox users can, too. Although it was originally developed independently for Safari by David Watanabe (creator of apps like Acquistion and Newsfire), it was acquired by Yahoo! back in May. Apparently, that resulted in a preview of a Firefox version, which seems to work just as well as its Safari counterpart. If you like the idea of instant search results, displayed as you type, give it a try.

Inquisitor for Firefox is still in preview, so you'll have to sign up or log in to download. Once installed, it goes in your list of search engines, and is enabled by default. If you decide you don't like it, just click the Inquisitor icon next to your search bar and switch back to whichever search engine you were using before.

The only drawback of the latest versions of Inquisitor, depending on how you look at it, is that they use Yahoo! Search by default. You don't notice this so much when you're going straight to a webpage from the Inquisitor results, but you definitely do when you perform a full search. (You can choose between Yahoo! and Google in the add-on's preferences, however.)



[Via Cybernetnews]

Twine Overview from Twine Official on Vimeo

Almost exactly one year ago, we wrote about Twine, a social network built on the semantic web. After expanding the private beta back in March, the Twine team has spent the last eight months really working on site usability, interface and performance. Today, Twine 1.0 is officially out of beta and open to the public.

I had a chance to talk to Nova Spivack, the CEO and founder of Radar Networks-- the company behind Twine -- last week and he walked me through the service. I have to say, as someone who was intrigued by the idea of Twine before, but frustrated by its interface, the new Twine kicks ass.

Twine describes itself as an "interest network," you could also call it a semantic web portal. I like to think of it like Delicious on crack. Like Delicious, and Stumble Upon and to a lesser extent, Digg, Twine is a way to manage and share links of interest. Unlike those services, Twine will also work to scour the web for information related to your interests and can help organize information into more useful snippets.

Remember Azureus? Once upon a time it was one of the most popular BitTorrent clients around. And then the company behind the software tried to build a business model around it by going legit and partnering with content companies to offer free and paid BitTorrent downloads.

The problem is that the people who were already familiar with Azureus, which was renamed Zudeo and then Vuze, were used to getting their media for free, so it's a bit tricky trying to convince them to pay. A few months back, Vuze tried to make its platform a bit more attractive by adding social features. But more importantly, Vuze 3.1 made it easier to search for videos hosted on sites besides Vuze. So you could find legal videos, but you could also search sites like Btjunkie and Mininova for slightly less legal files.

Vuze 4 was released this week, and like in Vuze 3.1, the Torrent search box is front and center, making it almost easier to find illegally shared videos than the legit cntent from the "Vuze HD Network" that Vuze really wants you to find. The goal is undoubtedly to attract back some of the BitTorrent users who have fond memories of Azureus but have since migrated to other platforms with a slick client that lets you search for, download, manage, and even watch videos from a variety of sites.

The paid downloads seem to be gone, but select content in the Vuze HD Network (not all of which is available in high definition, by the way), is ad-supported. For example, you can watch Season 1 of Dexter for free if you're willing to put up with a few ads. And if you don't bother trying to download the ad-free DVD rips from another site first.

[via NewTeeVee]